The Talking Tablet

As I returned from an adventure AT Ikea in downtown Taipei I decided on the homeward journey to take a colorful city taxi (yes, I took the easy way home).  As I showed the taxi driver where to go using my printed address in Taiwanese he nodded and off we went to Tainmu, a suburb in Northern Taipei.  As we ground to a halt in the rush hour traffic I decided to put the X60 to the test and see if I could connect to a wireless network in the city center.  To my surprise I found a number of networks and proceeded to connect to a free WLAN and naturally began to go on my digital travels. 

 The taxi driver was intrigued as to what I was doing with the stylus and tablet as he repeatedly looked into his rear view mirror. After 5 minutes of gazing and impatiently standing in traffic he began to chatter in Taiwanese, naturally having only been in Taiwan for less than two weeks I had no idea what he was rambling on about.  So I took a leap of faith and showed him the tablet with its inking capability.  He was flabergasted to say the least that I was able to grab an image or document from the web and annotate it. Our hands, feet and tablet based discussed began to flourish as he used the stylus to explain the way he would be taking me back to Tianmu.  I had been looking at a map of Taipei, took a screenshot, dragged it into OneNote and Bobs your uncle. 

Actually his name was Wan-Yu and he took to the tablet in an instant, I could see his mind working overtime as he brainstormed how the tablet could be used to assist tourists. There is something special with the stylus based approach and I love it! Not only did the tablet breakdown our language barrier but it provided me with an insight into how inking can be utilized in a variety of situated. I look forward to the next tablet adventure and have an idea in mind when I go to our apartment that I am preparing for my wife, daughter and I to move into.

As part of our continued preparation to create a safe and secure 21st century learning environment to support our 1:1 initiative we have invested in a CISCO Network Admission Control (NAC) device.

The NAC provides a scalable solution that scans all wireless tablets/laptops and enforces that they are compliant in terms of AV and MS patch updates.  A client side agent has been preinstalled on our master images that are currently being deployed to our 140+ teacher tablets and 300+ student laptops. The live demonstration today by Sunwell provided our technical team with an opportunity to test the product with a range of devices.  We are fortunate to have a dedicated and determined vendor who is keen to develop a partnership that aims to provide the school with a reliable, secure and scalable network environment.  Our assigned Engineer Hawke provided an incredible insight into the NAC’s functionality.

We will be beta testing the system with some Apple MacBooks tomorrow to tcheck the functionality of NAV running on the Mac platform and with Parallels running Win XP.

The primary purpose of the system is to  enforce the incoming i.e. mobile devices are complient with network policies.  If this is not the case the device will quarantine the client (allow for one hour of use on the network) and force the user to perform NAV and MS patches.

Phase II of the testing process will involve 20+ users using a variety of laptops and tablets each with diferent Symantec virus definitions and MS updates.  At the same time we intend to test the functionality/AP connectivity and saturation that is indicated by our Cisco Wireless Control System.  What systems do you use to measure AP saturation? 

As an educator I realize that it will be critical to not hamper our faculty and students when authenticating to our network services.  The policy may need tweaking to provide users with a seamless way to get connected whilst ensuring system integrity.

After a great deal of anticipation and a 10,000km trek to Taipei I received the Lenovo X60 that I will be utilizing for the months ahead as part of our transition to a 21st century 1:1 learning environment.  The x60 is a robust, dynamic tablet which I already feel is an extension of my right arm.  The natural design coupled with solid IBM functionality are traits that set it apart from other models. 

As we edge one step closer to providing a ubiquitous 21st century learning environment I can sense that our MS and US faculty will do more that simply embed technology.  The power of the tablet can only be understood once you have utilized the stylus to edit e-documents.  There are a variety of factors that will govern the effectiveness during phase I of the 1:1 initiative.  We will support our educators with a variety of mechanisims to empower all to begin to explore the digital landscape with a high level of flexibility.